Abstract: Any system in the natural world faces two major problems. First is maintaining its fundamental integrity over time. The second problem is that of retaining flexibility. Environments change, and so any for any system to survive, that system must change with it, i.e. adapt or die. Traditionally, biologists have considered such change in an evolutionary manner, that is, new options are produced de novo and selected upon by its environment (e.g. success or extinction). Given the costs of a bad mutation within a system, the pressure to utilise already existing options is great. Redundancy, where many agents may perform the same task, is a well-known and well-investigated phenomenon. The inverse of redundancy is pleiotropy (where one agent may perform many tasks) and is less well known. In this talk I will discuss the properties of pleiotropy and redundancy in a number of systems, and will ask whether an optimised system can be determined a priori.  This talk will be of great interest to engineers, biologists, physiologists, economists, computer scientists, mathematicians etc.

Resume: Erin O’Neill graduated with B.Sc. (HONS) in organismal biology, at ANU, and as a result spent 1yr working on lions as part of the Serengeti Lion Project in Tanzania. During this time an interest in human diseases was developed, resulting in investigations of the role of nitric oxide in infectious diseases such as dengue and typhoid. Her PhD, in immunology, investigated the production of cytokines by B-cells and she currently holds a post-doctoral position in muscle physiology – examining the role of the ryanodine receptor in excitation-contraction coupling. She is based in the School of Biochemistry and Molecular biology at ANU. Her interest in pleiotropy and redundancy, in various systems, was developed whilst investigating the role of cytokines on the immune response.